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Race and Race Theory*

Howard Winant
Temple University
ABSTRACT
Race has always been a significant sociological theme, from the founding of the field and
the formulation of the "classical" theoretical statements to the present. Since the 19th
century, sociological perspectives on race have developed and changed, always reflecting
shifts in large-scale political processes. In the "classical" period colonialism and
biologistic racism held sway. As the 20th century dawned, sociology came to be
dominated by US-based figures. Du Bois and the Chicago School presented the first
notable challenges to the field's racist assumptions. In the aftermath of WWII, with the
destruction of European colonialism, the rise of the civil rights movement, and the surge
in migration on a world scale, the sociology of race became a central topic. The field
moved towards a more critical, more egalitarian awareness of race, focused particulalrly
on the overcoming of prejudice and discrimination. Although recognition of these
problems increased and political reforms made some headway in combating them, racial
injustice and inequality were not overcome. As the global and domestic politics of race
entered a new period of crisis and uncertainty, so too has the field of sociology. To tackle
the themes of race and racism once again in the new millennium, sociology must develop
more effective racial theory. "Racial formation" approaches can offer a starting-point
here. The key tasks will be the formulation of a more adequate comparative historical
sociology of race, the development of a deeper understanding of the micro-macro linkages
that shape racial issues, and the recognition of the pervasiveness of racial politics in
contemporary society. This is a challenging, but also exciting agenda. The field must not
shrink from addressing it.
Raza ha sido siempre un tema sociolgico significativo, desde la fundacin del campo y la
formulacin de los enunciados tericos "clsicos" hasta el presente. Desde el siglo 19, las
perspectivas sociolgicas sobre la raza han evolucionado y cambiado, siempre que refleja
los cambios en los procesos polticos de gran envergadura. En el "clsico" perodo de
colonialismo y racismo biologicista sacudimiento llevado a cabo. A medida que el siglo
20 amaneci, la sociologa lleg a ser dominado por figuras sede en Estados Unidos. Du
Bois y la Escuela de Chicago presentaron los primeros desafos notables a supuestos
racistas del campo. A raz de la Segunda Guerra Mundial, con la destruccin del
colonialismo europeo, el surgimiento del movimiento de los derechos civiles, y el

aumento de la migracin a escala mundial, la sociologa de la carrera se convirti en un

tema central. El campo se movi hacia una conciencia ms crtica, ms igualitaria de la
carrera, se centr particulalrly en la superacin de los prejuicios y la discriminacin.
Aunque el reconocimiento de estos problemas aumenta y reformas polticas ha realizado
algunos avances en la lucha contra ellos, la injusticia racial y la desigualdad no se
superaron. A medida que las polticas globales y nacionales de raza entraron en una nueva
etapa de crisis e incertidumbre, tambin lo ha hecho el campo de la sociologa. Para
abordar los temas de la raza y el racismo, una vez ms en el nuevo milenio, la sociologa
debe desarrollar la teora racial ms eficaz. Enfoques "formacin racial" pueden ofrecer
un punto de partida aqu. Las tareas principales sern la formulacin de una sociologa
histrica comparativa ms adecuada de la raza, el desarrollo de una comprensin ms
profunda de los vnculos micro-macro que dan forma a las cuestiones raciales, y el
reconocimiento de la omnipresencia de la poltica racial en la sociedad contempornea.
Este es un programa exigente, pero tambin emocionante. El campo no debe encogerse de
abordarlo....
_______
*From Annual Review of Sociology, 2000.
***
INTRODUCTION
As the world lurches forward into the 21st century, there is widespread confusion and
anxiety about the political significance, and even the meaning, of race. This uncertain
situation extends into the field of sociology, which has since its founding devoted great
attention to racial themes.
A medida que el mundo se tambalea hacia adelante en el siglo 21, hay una confusin
generalizada y ansiedad acerca de la importancia poltica, e incluso el significado, de la
raza. Esta situacin de incertidumbre se extiende en el campo de la sociologa, que desde
su fundacin ha dedicado gran atencin a los temas raciales.
The extent of the literature on the race concept alone, not to mention the mountains of
empirical studies that focus on racial issues, presents difficulties for any attempt at
theoretical overview and synthesis. A wide range of concepts from both the classical and
modern traditions can readily be applied to racial matters. Variations among national and
cultural understandings of the meaning of race cry out for comparative appproaches.
World history has arguably been racialized at least since the rise of the "modern world
system"; racial hierarchy remains global even in the postcolonial present; and "popular"
concepts of race, however variegated, remain in general everyday use almost everywhere.
Thus any effective sociological theory of race seems to require, at a minimum,
comparative historical and political components, some sort of sociology of culture or
knowledge, and an adequate micro-sociological account.

La extensin de la literatura sobre el concepto carrera en solitario, por no hablar de las

montaas de los estudios empricos que se centran en cuestiones raciales, presenta
dificultades para cualquier intento de visin terica y sntesis. Una amplia gama de
conceptos tanto de las tradiciones clsicas y modernas se puede aplicar fcilmente a las
cuestiones raciales. Las variaciones entre entendimientos nacionales y culturales del
significado de raza claman por enfoques comparativos. La historia del mundo sin duda ha
sido racializada al menos desde el surgimiento del "sistema mundial moderno"; jerarqua
racial sigue siendo mundial, incluso en el presente poscolonial; y conceptos "populares"
de carrera, sin embargo abigarrado, permanecen en el uso diario en general en casi todas
partes. As, cualquier teora sociolgica efectiva de carrera parece requerir, como mnimo,
los componentes histricos y polticos comparativos, una especie de sociologa de la
cultura o conocimiento, y una cuenta de micro-sociolgica adecuada.
Over the past few decades, interest in racial matters, and the pace at which racial
dynamics have been changing worldwide, have both increased dramatically. Controversy
over the meaning and significance of race was greatly heightened after World War II. The
war itself had significant racial dimensions, and left a legacy of revulsion at racism and
genocide. The social movements and revolutionary upsurges that succeeded the war and
brought the colonial era to an end, also raised the problematic of race to a new level of
prominence. The civil rights movement in the United States and the anti-apartheid
mobilization in South Africa are but the most prominent examples of this. As it gained its
independence, the postcolonial world was quickly embroiled in the competition of the
Cold War, a situation that placed not only the legacy of imperial rule but also the racial
policies of the superpowers (especially those of the U.S.) under additional scrutiny.
Another consequence of the war was enormous migratory flows from the world's rural
"South" to its metropolitan "North"; in these demographic shifts "the empire struck back,"
pluralizing the former "mother countries" (Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies
1982). All these developments raised significant questions about the meaning of race.
En los ltimos decenios, el inters por las cuestiones raciales, y el ritmo al que la
dinmica racial han ido cambiando en todo el mundo, tanto han aumentado
dramticamente. La controversia sobre el significado y la importancia de la raza fue
aumentado considerablemente despus de la Segunda Guerra Mundial. La guerra en s
tena dimensiones raciales significativas, y dej un legado de repulsa por el racismo y el
genocidio. Los movimientos sociales y levantamientos revolucionarios que sucedieron a
la guerra y trajeron la poca colonial a su fin, tambin plantearon la problemtica de la
carrera a un nuevo nivel de prominencia. El movimiento por los derechos civiles en los
Estados Unidos y la movilizacin contra el apartheid en Sudfrica no son sino los
ejemplos ms destacados de este. Como obtuvo su independencia, el mundo poscolonial
se vio envuelto rpidamente en la competencia de la Guerra Fra, situacin que coloca no
slo el legado del gobierno imperial, sino tambin las polticas raciales de las
superpotencias (especialmente los de los EE.UU.) bajo un escrutinio adicional. Otra
consecuencia de la guerra haba enormes flujos migratorios de las zonas rurales "Sur" del
mundo a su rea metropolitana "Norte"; en estos cambios demogrficos "el imperio
contraatac," pluralizar los antiguos "pases de origen" (Centro de Estudios Culturales

Contemporneos 1982). Todos estos acontecimientos hicieron preguntas importantes

sobre el significado de la raza.
***
In this article I survey the theoretical dimensions of race as the new century (and new
millennium) commences. Because there are clear limits on space, not to mention on the
reader's patience, I shall limit my treatment to key points. I begin with an account of
the origins of the race concept. Here I consider how the theme of "race," though
prefigured in earlier ages, only took on its present range of meanings with the rise of
modernity. The deep interconnection between the development of the "modern world
system" -- of capitalism, seaborne empire, and slavery -- and the exfoliation of a
worldwide process of racialization, is not in doubt.
En este artculo examino las dimensiones tericas de la raza como el nuevo siglo (y nuevo
milenio) comienza. Debido a que hay lmites claros en el espacio, por no hablar de la
paciencia del lector, voy a limitar mi tratamiento de los puntos clave. Comienzo con una
cuenta de los orgenes del concepto de raza. Aqu considero cmo el tema de la "raza", a
travs de prefigurado en edades ms tempranas, slo adquiri su actual gama de
significados con el surgimiento de la modernidad. La profunda interconexin entre el
desarrollo del "sistema mundial moderno" - del capitalismo, el imperio martimo, y la
esclavitud - y la exfoliacin de un proceso mundial de racializacin, no est en duda.
Next I examine how sociological theory has addressed the linkage between modernity and
race. I argue that, not surprisingly, the sociological study of race has been shaped by
large-scale political processes. The founding statements of sociological theory, the socalled "classics," were above all concerned to explain the emergence of modernity in
Europe. Whether they understood this to mean the dawn of capitalism, the advent of
"disenchanted" forms of social organization, or the generation of complex dynamics of
social integration and solidarity, they could hardly escape some reckoning with the
problem of the Other, however s/he was defined: as plundered and exploited laborer, as
"primitive" or "uncivilized," or as "traditional" or mechanically solidaristic.
After sociology's center of gravity migrated across the Atlantic, racial themes became
more central. Dealing with "social problems" such as crime, poverty, and disease;
addressing urbanization, stratification, and underdevelopment; and confronting social
psychological issues as well, analysts again and again had recourse to racial themes.
Contemporary approaches to the race concept have by and large parted with the biologism
of the past, although some vestigial viewpoints of this type can still be detected (such as
those of The Bell Curve authors). The sociology of race was vastly stimulated by the
political, cultural, and demographic shifts that took shape in the postwar decades.
But as the turn of the 21st century nears, sociological theory is confronted with the
obsolescence of the Big Political Processes, such as decolonization and civil rights, that

drove the theoretical vehicle forward from the war's end. So now, racial theory finds itself
in a new quandary. Empires have been ended and Jim Crow and apartheid abolished (at
least officially). How then is continuing racial inequality and bias to be explained? Some
would argue that since racial injustice is at least tendentially diminishing, the race concept
is finally being obviated: in the globalized 21st century, world society and transnational
culture will finally attain a state of "colorblindness" and racial (or better, ethnic)
pluralism. Others note that this new situation -- of "multiculturalism" or "diversification" - provides a much prettier fig leaf for policies of laissez-faire vis-a-vis continuing racial
exclusion and inequality than any intransigent white supremacy could ever have offered.
But whatever poliical disagreements underlie the ongoing difficulties of racial theory,
there can be little doubt that these difficulties persist.
In the final section of this paper, I offer some notes toward a new racial theory. Any such
account must take seriously the reformed present situation: postcolonial, postsegregationist (or at least post-official segregation), and racially heterogeneous (if not
"integrated"). It must also note the continuing presence of racial signification and racial
identity, as well as the ongoing social structural salience of race. Racial theory must now
demonstrate comparative and historical capabilities, as well as addressing the formidable
problem of the micro-macro linkage that inheres in racial dynamics. As this already
suggests, such a theory would also incorporate elements (let us call them "revisionist"
elements) of recent political sociology: "process" models of politics, "new social
movement" theory, and "constitution" theories of society. Over the past two decades,
"racial formation" theory has made the most serious attempt to fulfill this mission.
This is obviously no small assignment; only the contours of such a new theoretical
approach to race can be outlined here. But I am confident that these notes, however
elliptical, will facilitate access to a substantial body of work already underway, not only
on race, but on the great multitude of issues, both substantive and conceptual, that it
intersects. After all, the theme of "race" is situated where "meaning" meets "social
structure," where identity frames inequality.
ORIGINS OF THE RACE CONCEPT
Can any subject be more central, or more controversial, in sociological thought than that
of race? Although prefigured in various ways by ethnocentrism, and taking preliminary
form in ancient concepts of civilization and barbarity (Snowden 1983), citizen (or zoon
politikon) and outsider/slave (Hannaford 1996, Finley 1983), the concept is essentially a
modern one. Yes, the Crusades and the Inquisition and the Mediterranean slave trade were
important rehearsals for modern systems of racial differentiation, but in terms of scale and
inexorability the race concept only began to attain its familiar meanings at the end of the
middle ages.
At this point it would be useful to say what I mean by "race." At its most basic level, race
can be defined as a concept which signifies and symbolizes sociopolitical conflicts and
interests in reference to different types of human bodies. Although the concept of race

appeals to biologically-based human characteristics (so called "phenotypes"), selection of

these particular human features for purposes of racial signification is always and
necessarily a social and historical process. There is no biological basis for distinguishing
human groups along the lines of "race," and the sociohistorical categories employed to
differentiate among these groups reveal themselves, upon serious examination, to be
imprecise if not completely arbitrary (Omi and Winant 1994).
The idea of "race" began to take shape with the rise of a world political economy. The
onset of global economic integration, the dawn of seaborne empire, the conquest of the
Americas, and the rise of the Atlantic slave trade, were all key elements in the genealogy
of race. The concept emerged over time as a kind of world-historical bricolage, an
accretive process that was in part theoretical,
[Footnote 1: Religious, philosophical, literary/artistic, political, and scientific discourses
all were directed in a neverending flood of ink and image to the themes of "the Other";
variations in human nature; and the corporeal, mental, spiritual, sexual, and "natural
historical" differences among "men." To the extent that this discussion addressed itself to
the problem of patterns of human difference/identity and human variability, it may be
fairly characterized as about "race." To cite some valuable texts among a virtual infinity:
Hannaford 1996; Gossett 1965; Todorov, 1985; Todorov 1993; Kiernan 1969; Montagu
1997 [1942]; Banton 1987.]
but much more centrally practical. Though intimated throughout the world in innumerable
ways, racial categorization of human beings was a European invention. It was an outcome
of the same world-historical processes that created European nation-states and empires,
built the "dark satanic mills" of Britain (and the even more dark and satanic sugar mills of
the Brazilian Reconcavo and the Caribbean), and explained it all by means of
Enlightenment rationality.
But this is not to say that the European attainment of imperial and world-encompassing
power "gave rise" to race. Indeed it is just as easy to argue the opposite: that the modern
concept of race "gave rise to," or at least facilitated the creation of, an integrated
sociopolitical world, a modern authoritarian state, the structures of an international
economy, and the emergence over time of a global culture. We must recognize all these
issues as deeply racialized matters.
THE SOCIOLOGICAL STUDY OF RACE HAS BEEN SHAPED BY LARGE-SCALE
POLITICAL PROCESSES
The "Classics"
When we look at the treatment of racial matters in sociological theory, we find the
concept present from the beginning, though often in an inchoate, undertheorized, or takenfor-granted form. Herbert Spencer, the usual example cited as the ur-sociologist, reads as

a biological determinist today, preoccupied as he is with human evolution and the ranking
of groups according to their "natural" characteristics.
[Footnote 2: Early treatments of the race concept in Europe and the United States
combined a supposedly biologistic or "natural history"-based conceptions of with a high
degree of arbitrariness, if not outright incoherence, in their application. Numerous
groups qualified as "races": national origin (the Irish), religion (Jews), as well as the
more familiar criteria of color were frequently invoked as signs of racial "otherness."
Although this fungibility has been somewhat reduced and regularized over recent
decades, it still remains in effect, and indeed can never be supplanted by "objective"
criteria. See the discussion of "racial formation" below.]
Marx's orientation to themes we would now consider racial was complex. His
denunciation in Capital of the depredation, despoliation, and plunder of the non-European
world in pursuit of "primitive accumulation,"
[Footnote 3: "The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement,
and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and
looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting
of blackskins, signalized the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production. These idyllic
proceedings are the chief momenta of primitive accumulation. On their heels treads the
commercial war of the European nations with the globe for a theater. It begins with the
revolt of the Netherlands from Spain, assumes giant dimensions in England's AntiJacobin
War, and is still going on in the opium wars with China, etc." (Marx, 1967; 351).]
and his ferocious opposition to slavery, both commend him. But his insistence that the
colonized "pre-capitalist" societies would ultimately benefit from their enmeshment in the
brutal clutches of the European powers hints to present-day readers that he was not
entirely immune to the hierarchization of the world that characterized the imperial Europe
of his day.
Weber's treatment of the concept of ethnie under the rubric of "status" (a relational
category based on "honor") presages a social constructionist approach to race; but in
Weber's voluminous output there is no serious consideration of the modern imperial
phenomenon, there are numerous instances of European chauvinism,
[Footnote 4: Especially during the WWI years, when Weber was somewhat afflicted with
German nationalism.]
and there is an occasional indulgence in -- let us call it -- racialist meditation.
[Footnote 5: In fairness, Weber also recognizes racism, notably anti-black racism in the
U.S. See his remarks on U.S. racial attitudes in Gerth and Mills, eds. 1958, 405-406.
Weber's sensitivity to U.S. racial matters may be attributed, at least in part, to the
orientation provided him by Du Bois. See Lewis 1993; 225, 277.]

Durkheim too ranks the world eurocentrically, distinguishing rather absolutely between
"primitive" and "civilized" peoples based on the limited ethnology available to him; he
also muses somewhat racialistically.
[Foonote 6: Racial categories are employed as "social types" in Suicide, for example. See
Fenton 1980.]
It is not my purpose to chide these masters. Far from it: they acquit themselves well when
compared to the rank-and-file pundits, and even the bien philosophes, who were their
contemporaries. They can hardly be expected to have remained totally immune from the
racial ideology of their times. But that is precisely the point: sociological thought arose in
an imperialist, eurocentric, and indeed racist era, both in Europe and in the U.S. In its
"classical" early statements, it was racially marked by the time and place of its birth.
Across the Atlantic
It was largely in the United States that the early sociology of race first forsook the library
for the streets, partaking in the great empirical effloresence that marked the field's
establishment in that country. There was an inescapable association between the
discipline's development in this period (the early 20th century), and the rise of
pragmatism in U.S. philosophy and progressivism in U.S. politics during the same epoch.
Nor is it hard to understand why race was promoted to a more central sociological
concern as the discipline acquired a foothold -- indeed its headquarters -- in the U.S. This
was, after all, a country where African slavery was still an artifact of living memory,
where the frontier had only recently been declared "closed," where immigration was a
flood stage, and where debates over the propriety of imperial activity (in the Phillipines,
for example) were still current.
At the beginning of the 20th century, a nearly comprehensive view of the race concept
still located it at the biological level. On this account, races were "natural": their
characteristics were essential and given, immutable. Over the centuries such approaches
had accomplished a wide range of explanatory work. Both the defense of slavery and its
critique (abolitionism) had appealed to "natural" criteria in support of their views. In a
similar vein the holocaust visited upon indigenous peoples, as well as the absorption of
large numbers of former Mexican, Spanish, and Asian subjects through war and coercive
immigration policies, had been justified as "natural," inevitable forms of human progress.
[Foonote 7: The Chicago theorists, particularly Park, proposed a deterministic version of
this argument in the form of a "race relations cycle" through which macro-social
encounters between "peoples" were argued to pass. The four stages of the "cycle" were
held to succeed each other more or less inevitably: first contact, then conflict, succeeded
by accommodation, and finally assimilation. Residues of the "natural history" logic of
race can be detected here, to be sure, but there is also something of a social
constructionism at work. For example, Park suggests that alternative power dynamics
among racially-defined groups are possible at each of the cycle's phases.]

Even after emancipation and the "closing of the frontier" in the U.S., scientific arguments
still summoned "natural causes" to the defense of hierarchical concepts of race. In the late
19th and early 20th centuries the impact of social Darwinism was enormous (not merely
on Herbert Spencer), and the arguments of eugenics also acquired great support.
But as the world racial system underwent significant shifts in the early 20th century. As
labor demands grew more complex and the agenda of democratization gradually assumed
greater importance, biologistic racial theories became increasingly obsolete. The
resurgence of anticolonial movements in Africa and Asia (a century after the success of
such movements in the Americas), the spreading of democratic demands to countries
considered "backward" and "uncivilized," and the increased mobility (both geographic
and economic) of ex-slaves and former peasants during and after WWI, all motivated the
gradual but inexorable development of a more sophisticated social scientific approach to
race.
The two early 20th century examples of pathbreaking racial theorizing that require
mention here are, first, the pioneering study by W.E.B. Du Bois of black life in
Philadelphia (Du Bois1998 [1899]), and the extensive body of work on racial matters that
formed a crucial component of the Chicago School of sociology. Both these pioneers were
oriented by the pragmatism that was the most original, and remains the most important,
contribution of North American sociological theory.
Du Bois's The Philadelphia Negro sought both to make a significant advance over
previous knowledge (overwhelmingly ignorant and stereotyped) about black life and U.S.
racial dynamics; and to build, upon a solid base of empirical data, a powerful and strategic
argument for the democratization of race relations in turn-of-the-century America.
[Footnote 8: One should cite much more of Du Bois's contributions to the foundations of
US sociology, and indeed to democratic theory and practice in respect to race: the
Atlanta studies, the historical sociology (most notably Black Reconstruction in
America (1977 [1935]), and an astounding wealth of other work (see Lewis ed. 1995 for a
good selection of materials). While Du Bois was not entirely ignored by the "mainstream"
of the field, he was hardly given his due recognition either. As noted, Du Bois was
associated with Weber, whom he had come to know in Berlin. The complex set of
influences shaping Du Bois's intellectual and political development has been much
explored in recent scholarship: he combined a "high German" philosophical, historical,
and social scientific training with solid roots in American pragmatism (notably his work
with William James), and a deep engagement with the popular African-American
traditions he first met as a college student in the South (see Du Bois 1989 [1903]); Du
Bois 1991 [1940]); Lewis 1993; West 1989; Marable 1986).]
Though slightly marred by concessions demanded of Du Bois by his patrons (or perhaps
imagined necessary by him) the work still stands, an entire century later, as a magisterial
survey of the unique racial dementia of the US: the country's foundational involvement
with African enslavement and the permanent consequences of that involvement. In

addition to his pathbreaking approach to racial theory, particularly evident in his concept
of "the veil" and his understanding of racial dualism (Du Bois 1989 [1903]), Du Bois's
early work is notable for its relentless empirical commitments and independent
application of pragmatist philosophy (West 1989) to the sociological enterprise, both
theoretical and practical. As Elijah Anderson points out in his introduction to the
centennial reissue of The Philadelphia Negro (1996 [1899]), the tendency to attribute
these innovations to more "mainstream" sociologists for many years banished Du Bois
from his rightful place in the disciplinary canon.
The large body of work on race produced by the researchers of the Chicago School also
demonstrates the influence of pragmatism and progressivism. Oriented by a "social
problems" approach and consciously viewing the city of Chicago as a sociological
laboratory, the Chicago sociologists authored a group of studies focusing on crime,
poverty, "slums," etc., all problems that were frequently seen racially. The approaches that
developed in Chicago were notable for their attentiveness to their empirical subjects, and
for their intrinsically democratic orientation. Moving from the preliminary work of
Burgess, through the great creativity and comprehensiveness of Thomas and Znaniecki's
massive study,
[Footnote 9: Whose The Polish Peasant prefigured the entire contemporary filed of
migration studies (Thomas and Znaniecki 1994 [1923]). Thomas and Znaniecki's book on
what would now be considered a "white ethnic group" could easily be seen as a "racial"
work at the time of its original appearance.]
the Chicago engagement with the problematic of race culminated in the work of Robert E.
Park on the macro-dimensions of race (Park 1950).
[Footnote 10: For a good overview, see Bulmer 1984.]
There was also an important micro-side of the Chicago tradition, which proceeded from
Mead and deeply informed Blumer's work on the symbolic dimensions of race (Blumer
1958). Perhaps most important, the work of the Chicago sociologists broke definitively
with the racial biologism that had characterized earlier treatments, asserting with
increasing clarity the position that race was a socially constructed, not "naturally" given,
phenomenon.
[Footnote 11: In this developing analysis, Chicago sociology not only led the field, but
established the beginning of an interdisciplinary social scientific consensus. The early
contributions of Franz Boas in cultural anthropology -- whom Du Bois invited to speak in
Atlanta in 1911 -- were crucial here as well.]
The influence of this view on crucial later treatments of race throughout the social
sciences -- for example Myrdal's An American Dilemma (1944) or Drake and Cayton's
magisterial work (Drake and Cayton 1993 [1945]) -- was enormous. The Myrdal study
would not even have come into being, much less exercised the tremendous political

influence it did (Southern 1987; Jackson 1990), without vast assistance from Chicagotrained scholars.
CONTEMPORARY APPROACHES TO THE RACE CONCEPT
The same dynamics that prompted the Americanization of sociology and sparked the shift
from classical theorizing to empirical research were also at work in the development of
contemporary approaches to race. Once again, pressing sociopolitical issues drove the
theoretical vehicle forward.
Sociological argument could only properly challenge biologistic positions after the race
concept had been fully reinterpreted sociohistorically. Given the onrushing European
disaster of fascism, the task of elaborating a democratic and inclusionist theory of race fell
largely to U.S. scholars from the 1930s onward.
[Footnote 12: Not exclusively of course. Resistance to nazism also bred important works,
as did anticolonial struggle and cultural anthropology. A few examples: the Jewish and
homosexual activist Magnus Hirschfeld first used (as far as I can tell) the term "racism"
in a book he published with that title in 1935, whose topic was (logically) antisemitism.
The pan-Africanist movement, which owed a lot to Du Bois, was well underway by this
time, generating important works by such scholar-activists (and marxists) as George
Padmore, C.L.R. James, and others. Boas's students such as Gilberto Freyre and Ruth
Benedict were producing important studies on race in Brazil, as was exiled
anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss.]
Here the sociological work carried out by the Chicago scholars and their successors, and
the continuously powerful voice of Du Bois, combined with the insights and research of a
growing number of progressive racial observers. To name but a few other important
influences: the Boasian shift in anthropology, which refocused that discipline from
physical to cultural preoccupations and had widespread effects in popular culture, was
certainly significant. The association of fascism with eugenics -- a movement that had
developed strong bases both in Britain and the U.S. as well as in Germany -- forced
choices upon democratically and progressively inclined publics, both intellectual and
political. The "retreat of scientific racism" was the result of these unsavory connections
(Barkan 1992). Marxist accounts of race became more prominent in function of the
upsurge of communism (a leading, though not unproblematic, antiracist influence,
especially in the 1930s and 40s). The growth of important black movements, both
political and cultural,
[Footnote 13: Notably the Garvey movement, the Harlem Renaissance, and the
development of successful (though still effectively segregated) black media: music, film
and theater, newspapers, etc.]

also strongly affected the racial "public sphere" in the interwar period. And the liberal
democratic ethos, strongly invoked in the U.S. by the wartime work of Myrdal, exercised
tremendous influence (Myrdal 1944).
The Post-WWII Challenge
In the post-WWII period, the concept of race was more comprehensively challenged than
ever before in modern history. Decolonization spread through the world's "South,"
sometimes achieving its emancipatory aims by peaceful, or at least largely political
means, and sometimes requiring prolonged warfare to dislodge the occupying "northern"
(aka "white") power. Migration and urbanization of previously impoverished ex-colonials
and former peasants -- largely "people of color" -- landed millions of dark faces in the
world's metropoles. These newly urbanized groups soon mobilized and pressed for their
political and social rights, contesting entrenched customs and institutionalized patterns of
white supremacy and racism in numerous countries. Especially in the U.S., the hegemonic
postwar nation, these racially-based movements took the political center-stage.
These new demands for inclusion, in turn, induced serious crises in national political
systems. As racial regimes steeped in discriminatory or exclusionist traditions were
pressured to innovate and reform, sociological approaches to race were also transformed.
A great (although quite belated) interest in patterns of discrimination and prejudice
developed.
[Footnote 14: A valuable survey of "mainstream" sociological approaches to race in the
United States over the entire 20th century is Pettigrew, ed, 1980. For a more critical
perspective, see McKee 1993.]
Interest in patterns of racial inequality grew at the international level.
[Footnote 15: During the post-WWII years UNESCO sponsored a range of studies and
conferences on race and racism, producing collections of research on race and
colonialism for example, and deploying researchers in Brazil, the United States, the
Caribbean, and Africa. For a sample of these writings, see UNESCO 1966; UNESCO
1980; Bastide and Fernandes 1971. Studies of "internal colonialism" that systematically
linked racial domination and "underdevelopment" in a variety of national settings -- both
"peripheral" and "core" in world-system theory parlance -- proliferated during the same
years. See Cotler 1971; Wolpe 1975; Hechter 1975; Blauner 1972.]
Not only the mainstream sociology, but also the radical sociology of race advanced,
spurred on by the new movements as well as by dissatisfaction with the pace and scope of
reform (Blauner 1972; Ladner, ed. 1973).
While an obvious advance over earlier views, postwar racial theory was subject to
numerous limitations, both in its moderate and its radical versions. Most problematic was
the tendency towardreductionism: the three main theoretical tendencies all subordinated

the race concept to some supposedly more objective or "real" social structure. Ethnicitybased theories were generally the most mainstream or "moderate." They saw race as a
culturally-grounded framework of collective identity. Class-based theories understood
race in terms of group-based stratification and economic competition. Nation-based
theories perceived race in the geopolitical terms largely given by the decolonization
process so prominent in the postwar era. They focused attention on issues of peoplehood
and race unity, rootedness, citizenship, and irredentism.
[Footnote 16: For a more extensive critical review of the reductionism of 1960s racial
theorizing in the US, see Michael Omi and Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the
United States: From the 1960s to the 1990s, rev. ed. (New York: Routledge, 1994).]
As the 20th century (whose "problem is the color-line," as Du Bois had famously written)
drew towards its end, these approaches to the race concept also neared their limits. They
were informed by and oriented to the pressing sociopolitical problems of their time:
notably racial prejudice and discrimination (especially state-sponsored discrimination).
After these grievances had been forcefully raised in many countries by antiracist
movements, they were generally at least ameliorated by democratic and inclusionist
efforts at reform. Although hardly eliminated by shifts in state racial policy, racial
injustice became less visible as a result of these reforms, and overt racism was generally
stigmatized. In such a situation the racial theory that sought to explain such phenomena
slowly became obsolete. Thus are we left at century's end with a range of unanticipated,
or at least theoretically unresolved, racial dilemmas.
The Limits of Contemporary Racial Theory
The inadequacy of the range of theoretical approaches to race available in sociology at the
turn of the 21st century is quite striking. Consistent with the argument presented in this
essay, this theoretical crisis can be seen as reflecting the continuing sociopolitical crisis of
race. In particular, the persistence of racially-based distinctions, distinctions that statebased racial reforms were supposed to overcome, poses major problems for racial theories
inherited from the earlier post-WWII years.
Ethnicity-oriented theories of race had suggested that the suppression of prejudiced
attitudes could be achieved through contact, integration, and assimilation; and that
discrimination could be ended by laws and regulations that made jobs, education, housing,
and so on equally accessible to all. But the endurance of obstacles to integration severely
undermined ethnicity-based approaches to race,
[Footnote 17: At a deeper level, governments often enacted racial reforms that were more
symbolic than substantive, and enforced those they had managed to enact indifferently if
at all. See Lipsitz 1998; Massey and Denton 1993 for U.S. examples.]
while assimilation into white cultural norms was hardly desirable to most racially-defined
minorities. Faced with these impasses in the U.S. today, ethnicity theories of race have

devolved into "neoconservatism," which can do no better than reprove racially-defined

minorities for their continuing race-consciousness and supposed failure to take advantage
of civil rights reforms (Thernstrom and Thernstrom 1997). In Western Europe, these
theories take the form of "differentialism," which repudiates the racist cultural hierarchies
of the past, but affirms the exclusionist commitments of (French, German, British etc.)
"national culture," thus upholding barriers to immigration and racial pluralism, not to
mention integration (Taguieff 1988; Wieviorka 1995; Balibar and Wallerstein 1991).
Class-based theories of race had argued that racial conflict was the mode in which class
conflict was "lived out" or expressed (Hall et al 1978). This suggested that racial
stratification and intergroup competition was fairly well-defined in the postwar world
(Bonacich 1972, 1976; Gordon, Reich and Edwards 1982; Reich 1981). If the inequality
among racially-defined groups was to be overcome, then this would require not only
interracial solidarity, but also race-conscious programs designed to remedy the effects of
discrimination. Such programs, put into place in many countries and under various names,
have come to be known under the rubric of "affirmative action." But two factors have
undermined the plausibility of this account. First, a growing inequalitywithin raciallydefined minority groups weakens group cohesion both politically and culturally; this
undermines the case for affirmative action. Second, enduring white commitments to racial
privilege -- that is, persistent racism -- largely trump interracial working-class solidarity,
defeating whatever potential for economic redistribution such programs as affirmative
action may have offered. Thus class-based theories of race have in practice been vitiated
by the failure of the socialist (or social democratic, or New Deal) vision in the present
epoch.
[Footnote 18: Perhaps the greatest effort to argue for a class-based contemporary racial
theory in sociology has been that William Julius Wilson. For more than two decades now
Wilson has sought to present racial progress as dependent on generalized fullemployment policies and politics. In recent work he has striven to revive well-used "left"
arguments about the indispensability of interracial solidarity (Wilson 1996). But for all
that is valuable in this approach, its dismissal of the continuing effects of racism, and of
the experience of racial distinctions, is crippling. The sociocultural and organizational
obstacles to interracial solidarity remain far more formidable than Wilson
acknowledges.]
Nation-oriented accounts of race have been called into question by the combined weight
of international and intra-national heterogeneity. In a postcolonial era that has witnessed
tremendous migration, that offers unprecedented ease of movement, and that boasts of
communicative powers (mass media, particularly music and film, but also telephonic and
computer-based resources) unimaginable even a few years ago, the nation-based
dimensions of racial solidarity have atrophied. Trans- (or perhaps post-) national forms of
racial correspondence persist, but now take the form of diasporic identities of various
kinds (Kilson and Rotberg, eds. 1976; Appadurai 1996; Lemelle and Kelley, eds. 1994).
At this point, however, transnational racial solidarity generally lacks the kind of political
commitment and organization once displayed under the banners of pan-Africanism or the

"non-aligned" movements. In this situation, nation-based theories of race have devolved

into crude and "retro" forms of cultural nationalism, informed more by mysticism than by
social analysis.
[Footnote 19: "Cultural nationalism" as politics and racial theory in the U.S., Brazil, or
South Africa may have entered a cul-de-sac, but it is essentially benign. The same cannot
be said of the devolutionist nationalisms of the Balkans, Rwanda, or parts of South Asia,
which have reintroduced the quasi-racist program of "ethnic cleansing" in forlorn and
bloody attempts to achieve the utopian congruence of state and nation. Quite apart from
the resemblance of such policies to genocides ancient and recent, they testify once again
to the near-total hybridity of the human population and the impossibility of achieving any
societal homogeneity, especially in the present. Such policies also reveal the flexibility of
racialization, which has time and again been applied to exacerbate human distinctions
not easily recognized (at least from "outside") as corporeal or "phenotypic." Consider in
this regard not only Hutu v. Tutsi or Bosnian Serb v. Bosnian Muslim, but also such cases
of racialized conflict as: German "Aryan" v. German Jew, Palestinian Arab v. Israeli
Jew, or British v. Irish.]
NOTES TOWARD A NEW RACIAL THEORY
If the earlier theoretical accounts have atrophied, and a new approach is needed, what
would be its outlines? As the century draws to an end, a convincing racial theory must
address the persistence of racial classification and stratification in an era officially
committed to racial equality and multiculturalism. The present moment is one of
increasing globalization and postcoloniality. It is a time when most national societies, and
the world as a whole, are acknowledged to be racially multipolar, and when "hybridity" is
frequently recognized as a key feature of racial identity. Today, in marked distinction to
the situation that obtained before WWII, most states and members of state elites claim to
oppose discrimination, deny their continuing adherence to racialized views of their
populations, and may even claim to be "colorblind" or "differentialist." How and why do
racial distinctions endure in such changed circumstances?
Any minimally adequate theoretical response to this question must include recognition of
the comparative/historical dimension of race. The mere fact that we are discussing race
here and now (in a post-civil rights, post-cold war, postcolonial period), itself imposes
significant theoretical constraints and opportunities. As I argued earlier, earlier racial
theories too were products of their times and places. We remain in a similar situation
today.
A second dimension in which any successful theory must operate is the ability to range
over, and hopefully to link, the micro- and macro-aspects of racial signification and
racialized social structure. Such a multi-leveled and interconnected account is a general
obligation of social theory in the present (Huber ed. 1991; Giddens 1984, Collins 1987;
Alexander et al., eds. 1987). It is an obligation incurred by any attempt to conceptualize
the continuing significance of race. A notable and intriguing feature of race is its ubiquity,

its presence in both the "smallest" and the "largest" features of social relationships,
institutions, and identities.
A third theoretical dimension will involve recognition of the newly pervasive forms of
politics in recent times This may be alternatively regarded as a racially conscious
conception of action or agency. In the U.S., much of the impetus behind the
reconceptualization of politics that has occurred in recent decades was derived from
racially-based and indeed anti-racist social movements. The democratizing challenge
posed after WWII to "normal" systems of domination and power, "accepted" divisions of
labor, and "rational-legal" means of legitimation, all had inescapable racial dimensions.
Racially-based movements, then, and the "second wave" feminism which followed and
was inspired by them, problematized the public-private distinction basic to an older
generation of political theory and political sociology.
[Footnote 20: In non-U.S. settings, the "new social movement" phenomenon has not
always been so clearly recognized as racially structured. This is particularly notable in
Europe where its study was prompted by the vicissitudes of the "new left," the resurgence
of feminism, the rise of green politics, and the upsurge of terrorism in the 1970s (Melucci
1989). But in the "third world" the rethinking of political theory and political sociology in
terms of issues of subjectivity and of "identity" often took on a racial dimension. Consider
the legacy of Fanon for example.]
This has been recognized in new approaches to political sociology, such as "political
process" models (McAdam 1982; Morris and Mueller, eds. 1992), It also appears in the
revival of interest in pragmatist sociology, in symbolic interactionism, in "constitution"
theories of society (Joas 1996; Giddens 1984), and in the belated revival of interest in the
work of W.E.B. Du Bois (West 1989; Lewis 1993, Winant 1997).
For the past few decades these themes have been developed in a body of theoretical work
that goes under the general heading of racial formation theory. As one of the founders of
this approach, I must stipulate from the beginning to the lack of consensus, as well as the
overall incompleteness, of this theoretical current. Still, I submit that racial formation
theory at least begins to meet the requirements for a sociological account of race, one
capable of addressing the fin-de-siecle conditions adumbrated here.
[Footnote 21: Numerous writers now employ racial formation perspectives, both within
sociology and in other social scientific (as well as in cultural studies, legal studies, etc.).
See for example Gilroy 1991; Crenshaw et al, eds. 1995; Davis and Lowe 1997;
Almaguer 1994; Espiritu 1992).
To summarize the racial formation approach: (1) It views the meaning of race and the
content of racial identities as unstable and politically contested; (2) It understands racial
formation as the intersection/conflict of racial "projects" that combine
representational/discursive elements with structural/institutional ones; (3) It sees these
intersections as iterative sequences of interpretations ("articulations") of the meaning of

race that are open to many types of agency, from the individual to the organizational,
from the local to the global.
If we are to understand the changing significance of race at the end of the 20th century,
we must develop a more effective theory of race. The racial formation perspective at least
suggests some directions in which such a theory should be pursued. As in the past, racial
theory today is shaped by the large-scale sociopolitical processes it is called upon to
explain. Employing a racial formation perspective, it is possible to glimpse a pattern in
present global racial dynamics.
That pattern looks something like the following: in the period during and after WWII an
enormous challenge was posed to established systems of rule by racially-defined social
movements around the world. Although these movement challenges achieved some great
gains and precipitated important reforms in state racial policy, neither the movements nor
the reforms could be consolidated. At the end of the century the world as a whole, and
various national societies as well, are far from overcoming the tenacious legacies of
colonial rule, apartheid, and segregation. All still experience continuing confusion,
anxiety, and contention about race. Yet the legacies of epochal struggles for freedom,
democracy, and human rights persist as well.
Despite the enormous vicissitudes that demarcate and distinguish national conditions,
historical developments, roles in the international market, political tendencies, and
cultural norms, racial differences often operate as they did in centuries past: as a way of
restricting the political influence, not just of racially subordinated groups, but of all those
at the bottom end of the system of social stratification. In the contemporary era, racial
beliefs and practices have become far more contradictory and complex. The "old world
racial order" has not disappeared, but it has been seriously disrupted and changed. The
legacy of democratic, racially oriented movements,
[Footnote 22: For example, the US civil rights movement, anti-apartheid struggles, SOSRacisme in France, the Movimento Negro Unificado in Brazil.]
and anti-colonialist initiatives throughout the world's South, remains a force to be
reckoned with. But the incorporative (or if one prefers this term, "hegemonic") effects of
decades of reform-oriented state racial policies have had a profound effect as well: they
have removed much of the motivation for sustained, anti-racist mobilization.
In this unresolved situation, it is unlikely that attempts to address worldwide dilemmas of
race and racism by ignoring or "transcending" these themes, for example by adopting socalled "colorblind" or "differentialist" policies, will have much effect. In the past the
centrality of race deeply determined the economic, political, and cultural configuration of
the modern world. Although recent decades have seen a tremendous efflorescence of
movements for racial equality and justice, the legacies of centuries of racial oppression
have not been overcome. Nor is a vision of racial justice fully worked out. Certainly the
idea that such justice has already been largely achieved -- as seen in the "colorblind"

paradigm in the US, the "non-racialist" rhetoric of the South African Freedom Charter, the
Brazilian rhetoric of "racial democracy," or the emerging "racial differentialism" of the
European Union -- remains problematic.
Will race ever be "transcended"? Will the world ever "get beyond" race? Probably not.
But the entire world still has a chance of overcoming the stratification, the hierarchy, the
taken-for-granted injustice and inhumanity that so often accompanies the "race concept."
Like religion or language, race can be accepted as part of the spectrum of the human
condition, while it is simultaneously and categorically resisted as a means of stratifying
national or global societies. Nothing is more essential in the effort to reinforce democratic
commitments, not to mention global survival and prosperity, as we enter a new
millennium.
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